I had been very taken with
Elisabeth Kulman’s voice when I heard her in
the title role of Gluck’s Orfeo
under Riccardo Muti at the 2010 Salzburg Festival. The opportunity to hear her
in a Liederabend with pianist Eduard
Kutrowatz therefore seemed an inviting prospect. Kulman certainly has an
engaging recital presence, offering a little commentary between some of the
sets, and it was a pleasure to hear her rich, at times almost instrumental,
voice once again.

It was, moreover, a pleasure
to hear six songs, two sets of three, by Liszt on the programme, this duo
recently having recorded a Liszt recital. Liszt is still of course ignored or
at best patronised, a few piano works being trotted out again and again, often
though by no means always by pianists who are pianists first and musicians
second. (Thank goodness, then, for musicians such as Pollini
and Aimard.)
The composer’s songs are programmed from time to time, though again not many of
them, and they stand far less central in the repertoire than they should.
Kutrowatz for the most part stood as a trusty guide, the harmony at the end of
the opening Es muß ein Wunderbares sein
unmistakeably Lisztian, especially on the second ‘sagen’. Likewise, the opening
harmonies of Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
beautifully evoked Il penseroso,
signalling weightier things than in the preceding Einst, whose initial flightiness had yet given way to something
deeper, though not heavy. The unusual depth to Kulman’s voice announced itself
from the very opening of the first song, piano offering crucial rhythmic
underpinning, whilst Ein Fichtenbaum
offered drama in her vocal delivery, without degenerating into or even slightly
suggesting something ‘operatic’.

Frauenliebe
und –leben received a
good performance, Though the opening of its first song was almost peremptory –
it often is – it soon settled down. In ‘Er das Herrlichste von allen,’ words
were projected against a piano part that sounded like a veritable reproduction
of the human heartbeat, words and all. That song’s final stanza offered
imploring, angry, and proud sides to Kulman’s interpretation. Expectation,
however, continued very much to be a guiding principle, for instance during ‘Helft
mir, ihr Schwestern’, leading up to a nicely impetuous ‘An meinem Herzen’.
Finally, in ‘Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan,’ we heard a little,
though not too much, of the operatic lament, the tragic heroine. After such
pain, the piano postlude proved almost unbearably touching, necessarily soaked
in the experience of what had gone before. If I had not always felt quite so
involved by the performances as I might have hoped, I certainly did by the end.

Three songs by Albin Fries
opened the second half. It is always an interesting prospect to hear music by a
composer of whom one has never heard, yet sometimes there is good reason for his lack of renown. Fries, it transpires, is the composer of
two operas (Nora and Tizian) as well as songs, piano pieces,
and chamber music. My initial reaction was astonishment that the songs we heard
had been written towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first
century. Yet even if they had been written a hundred years earlier – and untimeliness,
as Strauss or indeed Nietzsche might attest, can very occasionally prove a
virtue – they would hardly have convinced. Essentially neo-Romantic – perhaps not
even ‘neo-’? – with occasional, very tame, ‘wrong’ notes redolent of the cocktail
lounge, the songs proved uninteresting, unmemorable to a fault. Sub-sub-sub-Strauss
harmonies, with hints perhaps of something French, were contradicted by a distinct
lack of Strauss’s highly developed sense of form and sheer craftsmanship. Each
song, including one, Mein Garten,
with a text by Hofmannsthal himself, meandered along quite without consequence.
Performances were undoubtedly committed, yet I could not help but ask myself:
to what end?

Schubert followed. First came
the D 497 An die Nachtigall, though
the programme unfortunately provided the text for D 196. If I found the first
two songs in this group a little generalised, Der Zwerg was a definite highlight. Schubert in ballad mode was
afforded a keen sense of narrative thrust from both artists. If Erlkönig was almost inevitably brought
to mind, this yet remained very much its own piece, music-dramatic through and
through. Not for the first time I reflected on the often overlooked kinship
between Schubert and Wagner.

It was to Liszt that we
returned for the final set. High Romanticism seemed more suited to Vergiftet sind meine Lieder, a wonderful
Heine setting, than it had to Goethe’s Es
war ein König in Thule, though Kutrowatz occasionally struggled, seemingly
less ‘inside’ the music than Kulman. The pianist was in much better form fro
the closing Lenau Drei Zigeuner. He
even allowed himself – and us – a lengthy pause during the piano introduction,
until someone finally switched off his/her mobile telephone, the culprit
treated with better humour than was deserved. Kulman offered a winning impression
of the gypsy world in her vocal performance; there was a genuine sense of the
improvisatory to the performance as a whole. I am less than convinced that this
particular song shows Liszt at his finest, but anyway...

This recital will be
broadcast on Austrian Radio 1 (Ö1), on 21 January 2013, at 10.05 Austrian time.